Frank Zappa

There is benefit in not presuming. There is a benefit in not acting as if knowledge is based on a presumed meaning. There is a benefit in writing and in thought to bracket assumptions and presumptions regarding those tropes and expectations we bring to rhetorical readings and exchanges. This short essay is a reflection on presumption. This is also a reflection on Frank Zappa. This, I note, is also a reflection on my own lack of interest in scholarship built upon what Roland Barthes once declared, “as if everything shudders with meaning.” Rhetoric, consumed with meaning, may simultaneously not always involve figuring out what something means or what it is. Rhetoric can also be about suggestion.